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International Centre for Theoretical Physics 1° / IC/95/210 INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS BROAD BAND SEISMOLOGY IN THE SCOTIA REGION. THE BASE ESPERANZA SEISMOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY M. Russi INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY G> Costa AGENCY and J. Febrer UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION M.RAMARE-TR.ESTE VOL 2 7ift 0 8 IC/95/210 ABSTRACT International Atomic Energy Agency The lithospheric study and the identification of relevant lateral heterogeneities in the and Antarctic continent and borderlands, is essential to undersrand the geodynamic evolution United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization both of the continental and oceanic bordering regions. The complexity of the geological evolution and the structural properties of the litho- INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS sphere in the Scotia area have been stressed by many authors. The present setting of the area is the result of the mutual interaction among the Antarctic, South American and several minor plates whose geodynamic history and actual boundaries are stiil partially unknown. The intense seismic activity that characterises the region encourages the use of the seismological approach to investigate the lithospheric structure of the area. BROAD BAND SEISMOLOGY IN THE SCOTIA REGION. Since January 1992 a broad band three components ssta? ion is operating at the Antarc- THE BASE ESPERANZA SEISMOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY tic base Esperanza in the NE area of Antarctic Peninsula. The station has been installed with the financial support of the Italian Programma Nazi'male di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA) by Osservatorio Geofisico Sperimentale (OGS) and Instituto Antartico Argentino (IAA). Russi et al. (1994) have analysed selected recordings using the frequency-time analysis M. Russi (FTAN) method obtaining some relevant information on i he largo scale structure of the Osservatorio Geotisico Sperimentale di Trieste, lithosphere in the Scotia region even if data recorded by i single station were available. P.O. Box 2011, 34016 Trieste, Italy, The extension of our analysis to further events and to horizontal component records is here presented. G. Costa Within the framework of the international co-operation t o the Antarctic Seismographic International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy Network, the OGS and the IAA are upgrading the Esper-uiza station and installing an and additional broad band station near the town of Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina) Istituto di Geodesia e Geofisica, Universita di Trieste, with the financial support of PNRA. Via dell'Universita 7, 34100 Trieste, Italy The inversion of the dispersion curves through the FTA N of the signals recorded by an increased number of stations and generated by events with source-station paths spanning and the region will allow us to extract the elastic and anelasti<- properties of the lithosphere J. Febrer in the area. Instituto Antartico Argentino, Cerrito 1248, (1010) BS.AS, Argentina. MIRAMARE - TRIESTE August 1995 some of their families with children, live in the Base, while during summer about 60 people work in the Base due to the presence of the rese.irchers of IAA and guest scientists from other countries. The base consists of a group of 13 small red-coloured living houses, a radio station, Introduction. some maintenance shops and depositories, a small heliport and a main building with the base kitchen and refectory. There is also a little chapel and a school for children The study of the lithosphere and the identification of relevant lateral discontinuities which follow their parents in the one-year stay at Esperanza in the Antarctic conlinent and in the neighbouring areas, is essential to the As a matter of fact, this very particular organization makes the base very similar to understanding of the geodinamic evolution of the continental regions and of the a small village and is therefore completely different from what we usually expect to surrounding oceans. find in the majority of the permanent Antarctic bases. A remarkable role in this complicated puzzle is played by the Scotia region, an area The climate is rather mild with a medium temperature around 0 C° in January and where the major Antarctic and South American plates interact with several minor minimals around -3D C° during the coldest season. Winds are rather strong and can ones generating a variety of tectonic phenomena. reach speeds around 100 km/h during summer and more than 200 kni/h during winter. The most evident structural feature is the arc formed by the group of submarine ridges and volcanic islands closed to the East which connects the southernmost South America to the Antarctic Peninsula (Dalziel, 1984). Subduction phenomena characterize the Sandwich Is. area, which forms the eastern margin of this arc. while a Base Esperanza Seismographic Station (1992-1994). spreading centre is active more to the East between the Sandwich and Scotia Plates. The Shackleton transform fault and the yet poorly known South Shetland Is. area close Base Esperanza station (Fig. 1) has started operating on January 20, 1992 (Fanzutti the loop on the West side. The northern and southern margins are represented by the et al., 1992). The instrumentation originally employed consisted of three Teledyne North Scotia Ridge and the South Scotia Ridge whose character is basically Geotech BB-13 broad band seismometers connected to a PDAS-100 acquisition continental. An exhaustive description of the geodynamics of the Scotia region can be system. The equipment has been installed in the interior nf a small already existing found in Barker and Dalziel (1983). wooden building located in the base, where electric energy to power the The solution of the Scotia region geological puzzle can be found only in the joint instrumentation is available. interpretation of collected data using different geophysical methods. Seismology Prior to the installation of the instruments a square hole about 2m x 2m wide and might give substantial contribution due to the remarkable seismicity level of the whole 50 cm deep was excavated until the underlying rocky ground was reached and a area (Pelayo and Wiens, 1989) when a suitable data base is available. cement pillar was erected over it as a basement for the seismometers. The station geographic WGS 84 coordinates are: Latitude: 63°•23" 53" South A short panorama of Base Esperanza Longitude: 56° 59' 47" W,;st Height: 31 m Bahia Esperanza (Hope Bay) is located at the end of the Antarctic Peninsula on the Antarctic Sound facing the icy profiles of Joinville, D'Urville and Dundee islands. To ensure a proper protection from excessive temperature variations the The base has been built in the very proximity of the sea at the Western side of seismometers were installed in the interior of a wooden cover. To reduce temperature Caleta Choza facing the rocky outcrops of Baliza Ciega and Rocas Dcnticuladas. gradients due to the cement basement also the floor hus been also covered with On the east side of the bay the gently sloped ice surface of Glaciar Buenos Aires insulating material, an exception being made for the small areas left unprotected approaches the sea, where it finally ends with a high ice scarp. Behind the base Mount where the feet of the seismometers ensure a proper coupling with the basement. Flora is located. About 600 meters from the base an old English settlement, named Temperature control has been provided by means of an energy source represented Trinity base and presently abandoned is found. by three 75 W lamps operating under the control of a simple thermostat. Power for The connection between the base and the airport of Rio Gallegos (Argentina) is the instrumentation has been obtained from a set of six 2 V batteries float charged by established more or less monthly by an Hercules C130 flying from Rio Gallegos to a battery charger connected to the main power source of the base. The timing for the Base Marambio to ensure supplies and people turnover to the Argentinian bases in the seismograph was originally obtained by means of the internal clock of the PDAS-100 Antarctic Peninsula. system. The flight from Rio Gallegos to Marambio lasts about three hours. The last jump, To protect the PDAS-100 Teledyne Geotech acquisition system, and to allow about 100 km wide, from Base Marambio to Base Esperanza is performed by confortable operation conditions for the operator charged with the station maintenance helicopters or Twin-Otter planes landing on the Buenos Aires Glacier in the proximity and data recovery, a small wooden room has been realized in the interior of the station of Base Esperanza. During winter about 30 people, technicians, military', including building to be used as an emergency laboratory. For each seismic channel two continuous data streams were recorded. For the The first step toward the new observatory establishment has been made during the primary one a rate of 2 samples per second was set, while for the secondary one a 0.2 Antarctic summer 1994, when a detailed field survey on the surroundings of Base samples per second acquisition rate was chosen. This values of the sampling rates was Esperanza has been done to select the final location for the instrumentation. suggested by the small amount (about 8 megabytes of ram memory) of storage Preliminary noise measurement were made using an ink recorder during January available, so that the data recovery had to be done every three days. and February 1994 and brought to the conclusion that the best suitable location would Data were transferred from the PDAS-100 memory to floppy disks by the IAA have been a site in the proximity of the abandoned Trinity Base settlement. operator which remains at Base Esperanza during a whole year. The operator also The digital noise recordings performed during the Antarctic summer 1995 survey performed the first processing of the data which consisted in the display on a PC confirmed the preliminary results, which showed comparable noise level conditions in computer screen of all the signals for their selection.
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